Keili Major — Estonian finger painter in the Italian Alps

The turning point

By twelve or thirteen I had already decided: I wanted to go to art school. I even took extra English lessons just to qualify. But at the end of high school, something with my health pushed me onto a different path, and that art school never happened. The dream didn't really go away, though. It came back in Australia, in 2015, in a much clearer voice: this is the only thing I want to do. I haven't stopped since. In 2016 I won my first prize, with an oil painting of a roadside watermelon stand somewhere in the Australian hinterland. When I heard, I cried. For the first time I thought: maybe I can really be an artist.

The faraway world

Claudio and I moved to Australia in 2015. We were looking for an English-speaking country where we could both work and live in the same language. We stayed seven years, mostly in Queensland, and at one point — for a few months — we lived in a van. That's where I opened my first gallery. That's where my painting blew open: the turquoise water, the palms, the white beaches, the light — I couldn't believe places like that were real. I also found my teacher there — Bill Mackay, in Noosa, Queensland — and almost everything I teach today I learned from him. It wasn't always easy: the heat was brutal, the distance from family heavier still. But I came home with my way of painting water, with confidence, and — more than anything — with the idea that art is an everyday thing, not a luxury.

Painting with my fingers

The first time, in 2018, wasn't a choice — it was a need. I was working on a huge koi, almost a metre square, and the brushes were taking forever. I remembered seeing someone paint with the finger painting technique. I put on a glove, scooped some paint, pressed my finger to the canvas — and felt this little jolt of electricity at my fingertip. Like two puzzle pieces clicking. I knew right away: this is what I'm meant to do. Fingers give me three things brushes can't. Connection — there's nothing between me and the canvas. Speed — what would take me a month with a brush takes two or three days with my hands. And colours that blend like butter, perfect for the kind of vibrating, alive impressionism I'm after. The first finger painting I really loved was an Estonian forest — from a photo I had taken, of a place I had been. I sold it eventually, and a part of me still misses it.

"I pressed my finger on the canvas and felt a little jolt. Like two puzzle pieces clicking into place."

Teaching

Teaching has always been mine. Even back in Australia, during those years, I had my first students — adults and children, from a small studio in Queensland to the van that became my first gallery. When we moved back to Italy I started over here. My studio is in Regione Sparvaira 14, in Garessio. My first Italian student was Mike, from New Zealand, who had cycled past the studio many times without realising there was a painter inside. When he found my website he wrote: "No way." The best moment, when I'm teaching, is the one I call the click — when I see in my student's eyes the same thing I felt with my own teacher. That's what feeds me. I teach realism, impressionism, and abstract — but the technique is the same: layers, transitions, fearlessness. First the simple dark-against-light, then three transitional colours, then five, then the micro-blends you almost can't see. I like going deep. I'm looking for people who genuinely want to learn, not just pass the time. Children teach me so much: they go outside the lines without fear. With adults, my main job is to take the fear of mistakes out of the way. Because every mistake can be repainted. Always.